Bollywood actress Nutan talks about Bimal Roy... "We have very few directors like Bimal Roy to begin with but what made him special that he was not a jack of all trades, he was master of all trades. He was a very good cameraman, very good photographer,...

Sunny Pawar
Before knowing that Garth Davis was a successful commercials director, I stood up from the screening of his first feature movie, Lion (2016) telling myself, “well now, that was nice, but rather commercial”. Not everything is bad about commercialization:...

It seems appropriate today to speak about Firaaq, a 2008 movie which is Nandita Das’s debut film venture, based on the 2002 Gujarat anti-Muslim riots, in which Indian PM Modi had been suspected of biased non-intervention. Today, because the pressure of...

The long-awaited 80th anniversary of Nutan's birth has arrived! On top of being able to order Lalitha Tamhane's book in its English version (hopefully, I'll try asap), here's an article which, in agreement with Seema who had wondered if this contribution...

Why did I decide to read EM Forster’s A passage to India? Probably no other reason than it’s about a European’s vision of India and I had enjoyed some other books by the same author, Howard’s End and A room with a view. Then there was a film to watch...

Went to see Parched (2015), by Leena Yadav, of (not good) Shabd fame. So I was a bit wary of what was to come. What came was a rather pleasant surprise, I’m happy to say. Parched is the story of four gujarati women, stuck all four of them in male-dominated...

Thanks to Anu Warrier’s Conversations over chai, I have just been the fortunate viewer of Astitva, by Mahesh Manjrekar, a film which was shot in 2000. If you haven’t read her review, please do, it’s a thoughtful, well-balanced commentary of the movie,...

It’s weird how when one starts wondering about a Satyajit Ray movie, one is faced with lots of people telling everyone it’s a masterpiece – this 1969 movie is even somewhere graced with the ubiquitous title of Ray’s best film ever – and how so little...

During our stay in October I finally went to the movies in India… A little post on this! (those of you who can read my French have had a little preview of the event here ). Almost ever since the beginning of my interest in Bollywood, people had been telling...

Nutan left us 25 years ago today. Here's a tribute to the actress who now shines from high above: I have simply selected some unpublished photos of her (well, perhaps not all), and hoped that some of you would enjoy seeing them. First a selection of non-film...

I knew before coming to Pilani that I would have to deliver an address in the context of the Conference on Communications Systems, but of course it couldn't be a scientific paper, so I had devised a subject called "the pleasure of communication", which...